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I stayed where I always was, politically, and yet it seems to me that the jamboree of British politics has moved wildly to the Left.

That’s what Times columnist Matthew Syed told viewers of Politics Live, echoing a refrain that has become increasingly familiar among establishment commentators who like to believe that their own views are moderate, while the world around them has lurched left.

It is a comforting myth for those who have moved rightwards themselves — but demonstrably false.

The Overton Window — the range of political ideas considered acceptable at any given time — has not shifted to the Left in the United Kingdom.

The last fifteen years have seen a steady and measurable rightward movement across policy, rhetoric, and political identity.

Far from being marginalised, ideas once considered reactionary or extreme have entered the mainstream, shaping major parties and the public conversation.

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Look at the political terrain.

Since 2016, the Conservative Party has grown more populist, nationalist and authoritarian in tone.

Brexit nationalism hardened into a politics of scapegoating — of migrants, the unemployed, protesters, and anyone seen as “outsiders”.

Even now, under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership, the Conservative Party toys with leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, proposing to curtail fundamental protections that were once considered cornerstones of the UK’s moral order.

That is not moderation; it is regression.

Alongside this, Reform UK has become a significant force.

In polls it has passed Labour and in certain regions it has overtaken the Conservatives.

Its appeal rests almost entirely on pushing ideas further to the right: hard borders, deportations, anti-“woke” rhetoric, climate change denial, and open hostility toward migrants and international institutions.

The fact that a party defined by those stances can gain ground — and draw Tory MPs into its ranks — shows how much the political conversation has shifted.

Instead of holding firm to liberal democratic norms, the major parties are now competing to sound tougher than Nigel Farage.

Even Labour, under Keir Starmer, has adjusted to this new environment.

The party’s rhetoric on immigration has hardened markedly: talk of “border control”, reduced legal migration, and stricter family reunification policies has replaced previous commitments to openness and human rights.

Labour’s front bench no longer speaks of freedom of movement as a virtue; it treats migration as a problem to be managed.

That is not evidence of a leftward turn — it is triangulation in response to a resurgent right.

Polling supports this.

Surveys by Ipsos and others consistently show large majorities of British voters saying immigration levels are too high.

Reform UK is now seen by more people as the party most trusted to handle immigration and asylum than either Labour or the Conservatives.

Parliamentary debates reflect the same drift: researchers have noted that the language used in Westminster about migration has become increasingly “securitised” — focusing on illegality, borders, and control — and less on humanity or integration.

When the vocabulary of the legislature itself changes, that’s the Overton Window moving.

This trend extends beyond Westminster.

Across the UK, far-right and anti-immigration protests have become more common and more violent.

Rallies that once would have drawn small groups of extremists now attract thousands, sometimes with elected politicians lending implicit approval.

On social media, conspiracy theories about refugees and “replacement” have moved from the outer margins of online culture into mainstream feeds, repeated uncritically by commentators and MPs alike.

Culturally, the tone of public discourse has shifted too.

The idea of withdrawing from international human rights treaties is no longer unthinkable.

Government ministers regularly attack judges, lawyers, and NGOs for upholding asylum law.

The rhetoric of “British sovereignty” has morphed into a justification for cruelty: the belief that mistreating the vulnerable is a form of patriotic defiance.

That’s not left-wing – it’s authoritarian right-wing nationalism — and it dominates the political airwaves.

Even the supposed evidence of a “Left shift” — greater acceptance of diversity and progressive social norms — doesn’t hold up when examined properly.

Yes, Britain has liberalised culturally on issues such as sexuality and gender, and younger people are more inclusive than their elders.

But that’s a social development, not a political one.

It has not produced a surge of enthusiasm for socialist economics or radical reform.

It sits alongside, not instead of, a growing appetite for border enforcement, austerity-lite fiscal discipline, and national security authoritarianism.

The cultural liberalisation that some pundits fixate on has distracted them from noticing the political regression happening under their noses.

The rise of the far right, both in Parliament and on the streets, is not a fringe curiosity; it’s the clearest indicator of the direction of travel.

Hope Not Hate’s State of Hate reports chart the steady mainstreaming of extremist narratives and the normalisation of far-right talking points in broadcast media.

In 2025, public discourse around asylum seekers has grown so hostile that violence has followed words — yet newspapers and television panels still debate whether “migrants are taking too much”.

That’s what a rightward Overton shift looks like in real time.

Meanwhile, the supposed “Left” that Syed derides has withered.

There is no mass movement for radical redistribution or nationalisation; the Labour Party has distanced itself from even modest social democratic measures.

Starmer’s leadership has been defined by his refusal to challenge the economic consensus, not by any attempt to push it leftwards.

A genuinely leftward shift would have seen public ownership, wealth taxes, and worker empowerment regain legitimacy.

Instead, they’ve been buried under the mantra of “stability” — a word that means, in practice, preserving the inequalities of the last decade.

So when Matthew Syed claims that his politics haven’t changed, but the country has moved left around him, he is declaring himself a fantasist.

The facts show the opposite: the UK’s political and media establishment has absorbed the language of the right, normalised its framing, and turned punitive nationalism into the new centre ground.

The “radical left” Syed imagines is a mirage — a convenient scapegoat for his own unease at how far mainstream conservatism has been allowed to stretch the boundaries of acceptable debate.

The truth is plain: the United Kingdom has been dragged rightward, not leftward.

The rise of Reform UK, the hardening of both major parties on immigration, the populist attack on human rights, and the emboldening of street extremism all tell the same story.

The window hasn’t moved to the Left; it has been yanked open to the Right — and those pretending otherwise are working to push it further.

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